Simple Watercolor Landscape Paintings

Would you like to make simple watercolor landscape paintings? Here you’ll see two projects that I can’t even believe I made. If I can do it so can you!

I had never done any freehand watercolor in anything but abstract shapes and backgrounds, before these cards! I was inspired by a timelapse video I saw on Pinterest that made it look easy so I had to give it a try! The one on the left was my “test run”. I decided to videotape myself while creating the version on the right. That video is toward the end of this post.

To create these focal pieces I used two paintbrushes!

I had one small and one medium-sized paintbrush. The small one should have probably had a finer tip as it would have been helpful when creating the trees at the bottom. I’m still pretty happy with how these focal pieces turned out even still. On this version, I just used Smoky Slate ink for the sky.

On this second card, I attempted to add a little color to the sky.

At the time I was working on my August Color Challenge card for the Color Fusers Blog hop, so I was looking for a way to add in the Blackberry Bliss, which of course I added into the sky.

The process for creating the landscape was actually pretty simple!

I painted from top to bottom and essentially did the same steps with four different colors.

Here are a few details:

Create a watercolor wash for the sky using Smoky Slate ink (and Blackberry Bliss on the second version). Dry with a heat tool until completely dry.

Using Coastal Cabana ink watercolor the line for the land in the background and create a light watercolor wash a little way down the paper.

Touch along the top edge of the Coastal Cabana with the tip of the paintbrush to create a textured line. Use fresh ink on the tip of the paintbrush so it’s a bit darker than the “land” below. The texture looks like tiny trees along the ridge. Dry with a heat tool.

Repeat steps #1 through #3 above to create the other land/mountain shapes.

Use the fine tip paintbrush with Basic Gray ink and draw straight lines in varying heights for the tree trunks. Then fill out the trees to look like pine tree shapes.

One of the biggest challenges when making these cards was to work in such a small space.

I’m thinking it might be easier to create simple watercolor landscape paintings on a bit of a larger piece of watercolor paper. Something to try!

For these projects, I used the Itty Bitty Greetings stamp set for the sentiment plus a bunch of ink refills. There is a complete supply list at this end of this post. Plus you’ll find project dimensions as well.

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Check out my video tutorial here:

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I am a seeker of that crazy, excited feeling that comes when you've created something that’s unique, beautiful and expresses who you are in some small way. It’s like making a new discovery, when you find a unique combination of color, layout, dimension and texture. I call it a creative spark and it makes me giddy! Through sharing and teaching I hope to help others find this amazing feeling of creative bliss!

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